This is a STELLAR premise!
Truly!! I often find Fantasy books reuse the premise of others over and over and over. Especially to remain relevant in online spaces.

However, I found this book to be a bit lacking for a few reason.

The first being despite its Publication growing ever closer it is still full of typos and misspellings.
The second being this book tosses and turns you all around. I think it almost becomes too in depth in terms of descriptions that the plot seems to be forgotten.
In the very beginning you aren’t really given much of a basis about the main character. I felt like I was struggling to keep up with what was happening every scene change instead of things blending and melding together smoothly.

I think the book needed just a bit more time, with a few more edits. But I truly think the premise is amazing and hope to see what else this author releases!



EDIT: I’ve re-read this ARC and truly do enjoy this book, for a Debut novel it’s stellar and the premise is amazing and one I personally haven’t seen before! The typos do take me a bit out of the story but overlooking them and it’s so worth it!

Magical, immersive, and riveting. With mythical origin stories, prophesied time travelers, missing dreams, and magical beings, this high fantasy is a thrilling ride that instantly makes the reader root for Saya and Andreas.

I was immediately hooked by the opening, which drew me in with both the writing style and direct introduction to the premise of the story:

“There was only one thing I remembered about the boy I loved. He didn’t believe I existed. Perhaps that was only natural, since we met in a dream. Mine or his, or the World Trees’, who dreamed our lives into existence, that I never truly figured out.”

From here, the writing only becomes more immersive and almost poetic, appealing to the senses with its vivid depiction of drifting through the skies and falling to black seas and waiting nets. The reader is thrust first into a dream, clearly laid out as such, and afterward informed that not all dream, and those that do are doomed to have theirs devoured by the Black Tree, or in the case of Saya, doomed to see every dream become reality.

The story first follows Saya, who is not free and has a secret of her own. Saya has a deep and tragic backstory, one I would have liked to see spread out more evenly throughout the book. We get much of her backstory right out of the gate in chapter one in the form of memories. While intriguing, troubling, and effective at making the reader sympathetic, it does detract from the story at hand and what she’s currently doing in the priestess temple. I think it could have been shortened here and sprinkled in later. The reader is given a slew of new terms and backstory for the different lands, Saya’s land in particular, and it’s a lot to take in for chapter one.

The story features dual perspectives from Saya and Andreas, as well as a rich narrative involving the past and present, looping it all together in a tapestry of in-the-moment action, immersive flashbacks, and intriguing philosophical arguments to support the theme of fated destiny vs. choice.

In the old time, we are introduced to Melasquez, a beggar who discovers a black World Tree, using it to rip open a rift across planes. When the rift closes, and the elders forbid its reopening, the dream connection between worlds is lost, and Andreas is desperate to bring it back to find the girl of his dreams.

The threat of annihilation looms over their heads as soldiers from the neighboring lands threaten their very existence. In the New Time, we learn how this story plays out, and in exchange for safety, the people must give their dreams to the black World Tree to power their floating land. Though there’s a steep price for parting with your dreams.

Imaginative, hard to put down, and nail-biting. This story engages the reader until the end. As a fair warning, this novel is perhaps not for those who demand clean, wrapped-up endings, as it leaves the reader with some food for thought but not necessarily a happily ever after.

Explicit content warnings: Infrequent but fairly explicit for the spice level. Fairly clean language (one instance of “arse” and some book-invented phrases). Some violence with gory imagery. I wasn’t a fan of one of Saya’s dreams in which she clearly tells the man in the dream “no,” but he continues to make sexual advances anyway. This can possibly be considered a gray area since it is her dream and may represent fear of intimacy, but it will likely turn some readers off.

A note to the publisher: The cover is fine but could be better. With this kind of story, I think there is often an expectation of a more vibrant, eye-catchy color scheme. Some examples would be Immortal by Sue Lynn Tan or The Starlight Heir.